Immigration News
H-1B Cap Update
April 20, 2009
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) today announced an updated number of filings for H-1B petitions for the fiscal year 2010 program.
Additionally, the agency has received approximately 20,000 petitions for aliens with US Master's or Ph.D. degrees. However, USCIS will continue to accept advance degree petitions since aliens with advance degrees also qualify to file against the 65,000 cap, and not all petitions received are approvable.
USCIS will continue to monitor the number of H-1B petitions received for both the 65,000 regular cap and the 20,000 U.S. master's degree or higher educational exemption cap. Once USCIS receives the necessary number of petitions to meet the respective caps, it will advise the public that, as of a certain date (the "final receipt date"), the respective H1B caps have been met. The final receipt date will be based on the date USCIS physically receives the petition, not the date that the petition is postmarked. The date or dates USCIS informs the public that the respective caps have been reached may differ from the actual final receipt date.
For cases filed for premium processing during the initial five-day filing window, the 15-day premium processing period began April 7. For cases filed for premium processing after the filing window, the premium processing period begins on the date USCIS takes physical possession of the petition.
USCIS will provide regular updates on the processing of FY2010 H-1B petitions. The updates can be found on the USCIS' Web site at http://www.uscis.gov/h-1b_count.
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